I made it to the shack without being challenged and crouched below the boarded window.
The stench here was unmistakable. It was the smell of singed flesh and human hair. I clenched my teeth and tried to erase a mental picture of what might have happened to Rona Volstedt. Inside the shack a voice spoke in the tight tones of rage barely contained. It was the heavy growl of Fyodor Gorodin.
“You have made much trouble for me, you and Carter,” he was saying. “But you can still earn my forgiveness. You have information; I need this information. A simple exchange. And really, how can you refuse a man like myself who has so much talent for persuasion?”
Slowly, I raised my head to squint through the space between the boards as Gorodins voice continued.
“We know that Carter did not drown. We have word that he was brought ashore at a Mayan fishing village on Yucatan. Beyond that we have been unable to trace him. There would have been a contact point where you could reach him in case of emergency. I want you to tell me where it is.”
Through the window boards, I could now see into the room. Slumped in a wooden chair, Gorodin hovering near, was Rona Volstedt. A single rope was tied around her middle, binding her arms to her sides and holding her to the back of the chair. She wore only a tattered scrap of the pants she had worn when she dived from the cruise ship. Above the waist she was naked, her small, well-formed breasts exposed. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair matted. When she spoke, it was in a weary, distant voice.
“There wasn’t any contact point,” she said.
“You’re a liar and a fool,” Gorodin said. “You must know that I can make you tell. Peacefully now, or later in screaming agony. One way or another I will find Carter. He has already killed some of my best men, and every minute that he remains alive, he is a threat to our plan. Now — once more — where can we find Nick Carter?”
“I don’t have any idea where he is,” Rona said in a tired monotone.
“I have no more patience,” Gorodin rumbled. “And now I will show you what happens to people with whom I have lost patience.”
The big Russian moved aside and the source of the smoke from the chimney was revealed. In a large iron brazier a fiery bed of charcoal smouldered. The rubber covered handles of a long tool of some sort protruded from the coals. Gingerly, Gorodin grasped the handles and drew out the tool. It was a long, sharp-nosed pliers. The pincers glowed dull orange as he displayed them for Rona.
“Perhaps you have heard of the technique,” he said.
“The flesh is pulled from the body a pinch at a time. The tender breasts of a woman receive special attention. You will live quite a long time, but in each moment of that time, you will beg to die.”
Rona’s eyes were fixed hypnotically on the gleaming tips of the pliers. “But I know nothing,” she said tearfully, “nothing at all.”
Gorodin ignored her. “I will give you one more chance to answer my questions,” he said coolly. “Then we will begin.”
I considered my course of action. I could kill Gorodin by shooting through the window slats, but by their shadows in the dusky room, I could see that two more men stood against the near wall. They would certainly be armed and quite probably would kill Rona before I could get around the corner of the shack to the outside door. Another door, directly across from the window, apparently led to a second room. It offered no help. If the room had a window, it would be boarded.
As I tried to think of a workable plan, Gorodin replaced the pliers in the coals and turned in my direction. I ducked out of sight as he said to one of the invisible men, “Bring him in here. Show Miss Volstedt what she can expect if she does not cooperate.”
A crewcut Slavic type crossed in front of my window, and as I raised my head again, he opened the door on the opposite side. A bumed-flesh smell spilled out like some foul gas. The Slav returned in a minute dragging something on the floor behind him which he deposited a few feet from Rona.
The thing on the floor was man-shaped, with a head, a trunk, two arms and two legs. Little else about it suggested a man. The flesh and muscle was lacerated, scorched, ripped, and pulled away from every part of the head and body. There seemed not to be a patch anywhere that had not been mutilated. In many places the bones showed through holes in the flesh while the thing leaked blood and other body fluids.
The lips were completely ripped away, leaving a skull-like grimace of naked teeth. Where one eye had been, there was now only a moist, blackened hole.
Worst of all, that remnant of a man was alive.
Rona gagged and turned her head away as this apparition scrabbled pitifully at the floorboards with a spastic hand.
“You shouldn’t turn from an old friend like that,” Gorodin said. “Or perhaps you don’t recognize the handsome young Boris.”
Rona released a shuddering sob.
“We found him unconscious but still alive,” Gorodin continued. “We revived him. We nursed and fed him for the ordeal. Then he paid, not too bravely, I admit, for that careless moment when he shirked his duty and allowed you and Carter to escape.” Rising abruptly, his voice hardened. “And now your time has come. I want Nick Carter, and you will tell me where to find him.”
“I–I don’t know,” Rona sobbed.
Gorodin made a cursing sound in Russian and reached for the rubber handles of the pliers.
The water proof tube that contained the six smoke pellets Stewart had given me was in my hand. Somehow, I had to hurl one of the pellets into the glowing charcoal. It was an easy distance — the problem was sending the pellet through the slatted window. What I needed was a blowgun, and as the image sprang into mind, I quickly undipped a ballpoint pen from my shirt pocket and unscrewed the cap, discarding it along with the ink cartridge inside. This left me with a three-and-a-half-inch tube, narrow at one end, just wide enough at the other to take one of the smoke pellets. I dropped a pellet into the pen barrel, poked it between the window boards, and began to adjust it carefully so that the trajectory of the missile would be accurate.
Now Gorodin advanced to Rona. Holding one grip of the pliers in each hand, he eased the red-hot pincers toward her left nipple. I aimed the barrel of the makeshift blowgun toward the glowing charcoal. My first try would have to be perfect, because I wasn’t likely to get a second.
I drew in a deep breath, put my lips to the end of the tube, and expelled the air in an explosive poof.
The pellet flew into the charcoal and settled on the burning embers with a delightful hiss and mushroom puff that sprayed its pale, choking smoke to all corners of the room.
Blessing Stewart’s ingenuity, I pulled out the handkerchief mask and cupped it over my nose and mouth. I wheeled around the corner of the shack and shouldered the door. It shuddered loose, then splintered open when I gave it a violent kick.
As I charged into the shack, Luger in hand, I saw Gorodin stumble through the door into the adjoining room, while one of his men was blindly searching for a target for his machine pistol.
I fired and he went down. From the floor he was still trying to raise the machine pistol, so I shot him again and he quit moving.
The second man in the room charged me with the red-hot pliers after picking them up from the floor where Gorodin had dropped them. I put a bullet through his head, then rushed to Rona and quickly released her. Between coughs she managed to gasp out my name.